Home internet businesses are cheap to run. When you first start an online enterprise you really don’t need much except the basics. Internet access and a reason to be in business. That’s about it, and those don’t add up to much in dollar amounts.
When bad winter weather shuts down businesses and schools for days on end, we often hear this (usually from other small business owners):
“You work at home? I’m a little jealous.”
This happened just yesterday morning with the guy at the oil-change shop. Did I mention it was a balmy 24 degrees F?
Evan attempted to make him feel a little less terrible by saying something like, “it’s got its pros and cons.”
But the guy was not convinced. His shoulders slumped. I could tell he would have given anything at that moment to take his steaming cup of coffee and go home, put his feet up and still be at work.
What’s the cost of comfort?
People like this guy are usually curious to know what running our home internet businesses costs us. We certainly don’t have the overhead he’s dealing with. Our advertising and processing fees are our biggest expenses. This is unbelievable for someone with a full-service car repair joint. Liability alone takes a big bite out of his profit.
Add in a few monster snowstorms that keeps customers away, and it’s not such a pretty picture for his car shop. No wonder he’s jealous. I feel for the guy. Our apartment-office felt even cozier after chatting with him in his office, where we could see our breath.
You can spend money on your home internet businesses, sure. It really depends of what your business is — ours is inexpensive because it’s primarily information-based. We aren’t packaging anything, we aren’t printing, copying and mailing out advertising on a regular basis. Our services consist of reporting, consultation and design. All done over Skype and online.
Assistance for small-business owners
And keep in mind that as a sole proprietor you qualify as a small-business owner. Therefore, you could benefit from financing assistance programs through the Small Business Administration. If you need to or want to, you can get financial help.
However, unless you plan to spend more on your computer than on your car, you really don’t need much money to get started. This is good news, especially because we know how many people would really love to work at home. Low start-up costs definitely level the playing field in a recession.
What you do need is that other stuff, which is just as valuable, yet a tad more precious and harder to find (and even more difficult to borrow): ingenuity and stick-to-it-tiveness.
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